noblevelop

Not all of us are into the fun stuff such as learning Objective-C. Some developers are just happy where they are right now developing HTML-CSS-JS websites. PhoneGap is interesting because it lets exactly those developers to develop for the iPhone or iPad without even having to touch a single line of Objective-C code.  Below is PhoneGap’s promise:

• Build your app once with web-standards

Based on HTML5, PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best… HTML and JavaScript.

• Wrap it with PhoneGap

Using the free open source framework or PhoneGap build you can get access to native APIs.

• Deploy to multiple platforms!

PhoneGap uses standards-based web technologies to bridge web applications and mobile devices.

So I tried this personally to see if it works. I created an iOS app using PhoneGap. The app did a simple job: allow the user to change his password in Windows Active Directory from his iOS device. It worked great. No Objective-C code. Only HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery.

Then I took the same code and pasted it into an Android project that also uses PhoneGap. Did it work? Not quite. Yes Android launched the UI but could not send the command to the server. This is due to the ‘same origin policy’ that is implemented in the Android browser. I have solved it but that is for another post.

The best thing is that in iOS I did not have to bump my head against the wall to make it work. It just works. Just one of the reason’s why I like iOS.